Norms, Enforcement, and Tax Evasion / Timothy Besley, Anders Jensen, Torsten Persson.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Besley, Timothy.

Contributor:

National Bureau of Economic Research.

Jensen, Anders.

Persson, Torsten.

Series:

Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w25575.

NBER working paper series no. w25575

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2019.

Summary:

This paper studies individual and social motives in tax evasion. We build a simple dynamic model that incorporates these motives and their interaction. The social motives underpin the role of norms and is the source of the dynamics that we study. Our empirical analysis exploits the adoption in 1990 of a poll tax to fund local government in the UK, which led to widespread evasion. The evidence is consistent with the model's main predictions on the dynamics of evasion.

Notes:

Print version record

February 2019.